In yesterday’s Guardian there was yet more evidence of the distressing and shameful failure of our benefits system to understand the very real needs of those coping with mental health problems. Adam Jacques, the disabled husband of a claimant, writes movingly of his experience of his wife’s acute distress at being refused access to the personal independence payment system:

There’s nothing quite like witnessing your wife tumble through a gaping chasm, to see that there’s something rotten at the heart of a welfare assessment system. From what we experienced, the wrong people are doing the wrong assessments with the wrong tools, using incorrect assumptions. And it left me reeling: how could this happen to my wife? I discovered that her experience is just the calamitous tip of a PIP-denying iceberg.

My wife tried to kill herself in March. She took an overdose – while I was watching TV in the next room. Cue, in short succession: 30 minutes of heart-stopping panic, a nerve-jangling ambulance trip to A&E, an admission to a secure mental health unit, and a longer stay recovering in a crisis house.

Acute episodes such as this can be a recurring reality for someone with a longstanding mental health condition. From her battles with depression and struggles to get out of bed in the mornings, to anxiety so overpowering that a trip on a bus triggers a blind panic, for my wife (let’s call her Bea) life is a titanic battle to stay afloat. She experiences overwhelming feelings of worthlessness, guilt and impulsive urges to self-harm that can flood her mind and distort her thinking. Socialising with friends is hard, while work in the past year has been out of the question. But she’s also incredibly smart, funny, kind and brave.

Mental health is complex, but something simple triggered Bea’s overdose: a devastating letter from a “decision-maker” at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), informing her that her claim for personal independence payment, a disability benefit, had been unsuccessful. She’s not the first, and won’t be the last, to experience the dismissive treatment that people with severe mental health conditions can undergo when accessing the benefits system. And PIP, as the benefit is called, is one of the worst offenders.

PIP is supposed to offset some of the extra costs of a disability. Applicants are evaluated by health workers from the private firms Atos or Capita, who forward their assessments to a DWP decision-maker – who scores you on “daily living” and “mobility” (you need at least eight points for each to qualify). Currently nearly 3 million people claim some element of PIP, and my wife expected to be one of them. As did her benefits adviser, an NHS psychiatrist and a psychologist. So, armed with a dossier of supporting medical documentation, Bea applied. That was last November. I’ve seen glaciers move faster. . .

I discovered that her experience is just the calamitous tip of a PIP-denying iceberg. While the DWP claims it doesn’t operate quotas to save money, figures released in April, covering just six months of 2016, showed an enormous expansion in claimants receiving zero points, up to 83,000. That’s only 10,000 fewer than in the previous 12 months.

This raises huge concerns about the assessment process – especially given that, when rejected by the DWP, 65% of applicants who appeal to a tribunal get the ruling reversed. A panel of welfare experts told the work and pensions select committee earlier this year that the whole process was “inherently flawed”, with medical evidence often ignored by officials during the initial assessment.

2 Responses

It’s shocking how the government in this country treats people who have disabilities – I am not even the claimant on our case and this process and how DWP/Capita has treated us has brought out feelings in me I did not even know that I possessed.

We started the quest for PIP for Husband on the 21st of May 2017 and we are due to go to tribunal in September as they awarded Husband 0 points (Asperger’s Syndrome and Epilepsy). The gent representing us is quite confident it will go in our favour, but all the same, it has been more than a year now we have waited for this to be resolved.

God help anyone who has to apply for PIP and have to challenge a decision, and who don’t have anyone to support them in the meantime…..